After studying and praying for two hours, Routunious and Duncan return.
"I've been thinking about the mushrooms," the priest says.
Elessaria asks, "What were you thining about them?"
Routuionious responds, "About ways to dry them down here. If Stago were here to assist, I might try using the nitre."
Degar interrupts, "No, that would ruin the mushroom. It needs to be done naturally, I tell ye!"
Routunious waves him off, "No, anything natural can be accomplished by means magical, if one understands how to attempt it. What I realized was that create water is a reversible spell. I've prayed for the ability to reverse it and...." The priest casts dispell water on the mushrooms and they instantly become perfectly dried pieces of fungi.
Degar whistles, "Verrrry clever....for a top dweller!"
Routunious smiles at the compliment, "Thank you."
Their levity is interrupted by the sound of skittering somewhere around them. They search for the source for nearly an hour, but find nothing. The caves are silent again.
2:00 am
The party prepares to make the descent to the bottom of the giant stone steps. Each ledge drops about ten feet to the next level.
Elessaria jumps down, avoiding any injury, and she examines the husk of the dead hook horror.Degar asks, "How did it die?"
Elessaria shouts up, "It was in a a battle, one with edged weapons."
The dwarf postulates, "Probably fought with those guards and got wounded, crawled down here to die, I wager."
Elessaria checks the next ledge down and the rest of the party prepares to follow her. Degar clumsily falls from the ledge and hurts himself, but eventually all are down to the next step.
2:34 am
The party jumps to next level. Degar again, stumbles and falls, injuring himself still further. They jump again, and this time everyone makes it without injury. The party, now accustomed to the activity, continues jumping to the bottom of the series of ledges. Degar drinks a healing potion.
Degar, embarrassed, says, "You'd think that caving would be more like mountaineering...did I mention I'm skilled at mountain climbing?" and is at 11HP.
Eyeing the bottom, the company observes a dead bark creature. Also, there are two angelic colums on this side of a 30' wide underground river that is roaring past the bank where they stand. Across the river are two demonic pillars.
Duncan asks, "How are we going to get across that?"
Elessaria wonders, "Are we sure we even want to?"
Degar suggests, "Let's toss the halfling across this river, and he can hold a rope to tie off on the other side!"
They examine the dead bark creature. It appears to have been killed by a combination of edged weapons and blunt trauma, such as might come from a club-like weapon.
Degar looks at the columns and the edge of the river. There seems to be a remnant of a bridge that once spanned the river between the two sets of columns. Signs indicate it was intentionally destroyed with tools.
Elessaria touches one of the columns. It feels like wet stone.
The adventurers spend a good deal of time debating what to do now. They are fearful of attempting the brambles again, and decide that they should try to cross the river somehow...but probably not using the plan of tossing Fink across. All the plans, however, involve rope use, and all the rope is back in the mushroom cavern with Tick-a-Tick.
Fink climbs back up, only to discover that Tick-A-Tick won't give him the rope without a command from Routunious to do so. Fink calls down to the priest and tells him he will have to climb back up and help him get the rope.
This is a long and difficult process for the priest, but he manages. In spite of some minor damage along the way, eventually the party is back together and armed with ropes at the bank of the river.
Unfortunately, Dunacan has a nasty slip on the wet rocks and and gets injured. He eats a hunk of magic mushroom and is healed.
After hashing through and trying several different options, it become obvious that the only plan with a chance of success is, in fact, tossing the hobbit across the river with a rop tied to him. Fink is not thrilled, but is willing to do his part for the cause.
Elessaria ties a rope around Fink and tries to throw him across the river. She fails and he plops into the whirling waters and nearly drowns as they pull him back in to shore. He lies there on the rocks, unconscious and breathing shallowly. Routunious casts a cure light wounds spell on him and he recovers slightly. While he is still too weak to protest, the elven ranger picks him up and throws him again, this time succeeding in making her throw to the other side of the river.
On the other side...the battered halfling scouts. He shouts back, "There's some kind of grotto over here on the other side of the pillars!"
Routunious asks, "What can you see in it?"
"There's a stone spider statue and 3 passages that branch off from the main chamber."
Elessaria shouts over the roar of the water, "Can you tie off your rope to something so we can pull ourselves across?"
Fink shouts back, "I'll try!" He searches the area and decides that the evil looking pillar will make a sturdy anchor. He expertly ties off his end of the rope and sits down to rest, waving to tell the others that he has done it.
The party makes a sling with a blanket, and Duncan is the first to cross. All of the others follow without incident, and find themselves stading in the grotto with the stone spider.
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